25-under-25: Dario Saric is the 76ers glue

The Step Back is rolling out its 25-under-25 list over this week. Follow along with our rankings of the top 25 NBA players under the age of 25.

The Philadelphia 76ers have perhaps the NBA’s most impressive collection of young talent. Joel Embiid already made his first All-Star Game appearance, and he has his eyes on a bigger prize this coming season. Ben Simmons is the reigning Rookie of the Year, and he’s all but certain to join Embiid at the All-Star Game this coming season. Last year’s No. 1 overall pick, Markelle Fultz, allegedly may know how to shoot a basketball again.

Those three soak up most of the national attention among Sixers players, but Dario Saric is the glue that holds the team together.

The Step Back’s own Wes Goldberg concocted the definitive description of him in mid-April: “Saric is like 2014 Boris Diaw on steroids with an emo haircut.” (ESPN’s Zach Lowe is also aboard the Saric-Diaw train.) In other words, his herky-jerky style of play isn’t always aesthetically pleasing, but it’s effective nevertheless.

On paper, the three-man combination of Saric, Simmons and Embiid doesn’t appear to make much sense. Though Simmons is a versatile defender who can slide down and guard smaller wings, both Saric and Embiid are more limited in who they can defend. And since Simmons is unwilling to bomb away from deep, it would seem as though a 3-and-D wing would be a better fit alongside him than another big in Saric.

That’s the beauty of Saric’s game: He’s a jack-of-all-trades who can fill in holes as a scorer, passer or rebounder.

To work next to Simmons, Saric needed to improve upon his 31.1 percent 3-point clip as a rookie, and he did just that last season. He canned 39.3 percent of his nearly 400 long-range attempts, nearly half of which were of the catch-and-shoot variety. Every single one of his 3-point makes was assisted — Simmons was personally responsible for 68 of those dimes — which speaks to how the Sixers allowed Saric to play to his strengths. Rather than asking him to create 3-pointers off the dribble, Philly had him trail above the break, where he could hoist catch-and-shoot treys or pick opponents apart with pinpoint passes.

Though Saric doesn’t rack up assists as steadily as Simmons, his vision and passing ability has long been a strength. The Sixers won’t ever rely on him as a full-time ball-handler, but he’s adept at creating offense for his teammates at the elbow. Having multiple playmakers on the floor any lineup that much more dangerous, which helps to explain why the Sixers’ starting five had the second-best net rating of any five-man group that played at least 250 minutes last season.

Heading into 2018-19, it’s unclear whether Saric will maintain his grip on a starting job. After all, he came off the bench in his first five games last season, although the Jerryd Bayless-as-starter experiment proved to be short-lived. If Fultz arrives at training camp looking more like the prospect he was at Washington and less like the shell of himself that he was as a rookie, Saric could wind up sliding back into the second unit.

Either way, he’ll play a pivotal role for the Sixers, especially if he continues to round out his game.

“What I should work on is more footwork, how to guard smaller guards in some situations with the switching, how to defend a quicker guy,” Saric told reporters during his exit interview in mid-May. “If I talk about my offensive skills, I think I need to improve again more shooting, more one-on-one in the low post, more one-on-one facing from the 3-point line. I think I need to really bring my game, if it’s possible, one level up.”

For now, Saric’s long-term future in Philadelphia remains up in the air. He’s already midway through his rookie contract, which means he’ll become eligible for an extension next summer. If the Sixers extend Simmons (as expected) and make a splashy free-agent signing in 2019, they could find it difficult to pay Saric his market value, particularly if Fultz isn’t irreparably damaged.

That may be why they reportedly weighed trade packages involving Saric while discussing potential Kawhi Leonard trades with the San Antonio Spurs, according to Jake Fischer of Sports Illustrated. Since Philly deemed Embiid, Simmons and Fultz off-limits in those negotiations, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Saric and Robert Covington became the logical would-be casualties. The Sixers aren’t exactly eager to ship Saric out of town, though.

“In trade negotiations leading up to and during the draft, sources say Philly expressed how highly it values Saric,” Fischer reported. The Sixers view him as “as a charismatic and overtly positive player whose energy was clearly missed within the Sixers’ practice facility when he played for Croatia in last summer’s EuroBasket,” according to Fischer.”

The potential difficulty of retaining Saric looms large over the Sixers’ long-term team-building approach, but it should have no bearing on their on-court product this season. Instead, he’ll continue being the Diaw to Embiid’s Tim Duncan, plugging in whatever gaps spring up on a possession-by-possession basis.

This year’s 25-under-25 illustrations are the work of Andrew Maahs of Basemint Design. You can follow on Twitter, @BasemintDesign.